Flacco says being NFL’s highest paid player was never the goal

Flacco says being NFL’s highest paid player was never the goal

Jeff Zrebiec, The Baltimore Sun – Those who know Joe Flacco best insist that he is unaffected by fortune and fame.

If his first public comments after officially signing a six-year, $120.6 million deal with the Ravens were any indication, the title of the NFL’s highest-paid player won’t change him either.

“It’s pretty uneventful, to tell you the truth,” Flacco said at an afternoon news conference at the Ravens’Under Armour Performance Center. “My rookie contract, I signed 10 different contracts. This one, you didn’t have to do all that. It’s definitely not sunk in, but it’s not really a big deal. Our goal is to win theSuper Bowl – that’s always been one of my goals. It’s never necessarily been a goal of mine to get paid like this. It comes with the job.”

Wearing a blue zip-up sweater, jeans and tan boat shoes, Flacco, 28, was funny and engaging throughout his near 25-minute news conference. About the closest he came to gloating was when he acknowledged being the game’s highest-paid player was “pretty sweet.”

“It means a lot,” he said. “It was never necessarily about the money and all that, but it was definitely about earning that respect and feeling like I was respected around here. The fact that we got it done and they have made me that definitely makes me feel good about how I played and how they feel about me.” Flacco said that he learned about his new contract last Friday night while having pizza at his uncle’s house in New Jersey. After the reports started to leak out, Flacco said that he was inundated with texts from teammates.